If you analyze disk space on your Android device, you may be surprised to find that the photos take up several gigabytes more than they actually are. How is this possible and what should be done to free up memory?
The problem lies in the collection of thumbnails of your device files that are stored in the Thumbnails folder.
The fact is that for each image file that is stored on the device, the Android OS creates a thumbnail so that they load faster in the gallery when you open it for viewing. Third Party Applicationssuch as WhatsApp and Viber can also create their own thumbnails when they scan image files. Usually the folder where these thumbnails are stored is called Thumbnails.
To get rid of unnecessary files, you need to do the following:
1. Open file manager on Android or connect it to your PC.
2. Make sure the file manager can display hidden files and create new ones. Otherwise, it is better to use the standard windows Explorer after connecting the device to a PC.
3. Navigate to SDCard \\ DCIM \\ .thumbnails. By the way, DCIM is the standard name for the folder that contains photos and is the standard for almost any device, be it a smartphone or a camera.
4. Select and delete the .thumbnails folder, it can be up to several gigabytes in size.
Once you do this, you will not notice much change in the speed of viewing images in the gallery.
Since .thumbnails is system file, Android recreates it again. Moreover, you may find multiple copies of the same file in the .thumbnails folder if you've reinstalled Android.
To prevent Android from re-creating the unwieldy folder, we need to create a dummy file that trick Android. For this, we create text file in the DCIM folder. You need to name this file thumbnails and then give it a Read-Only attribute in Properties. After that, you need to erase the txt extension. As a result of all these actions, an empty and undefined file with no extension should remain.
This dummy file will now prevent Android from creating a huge amount of useless files. You now have some free memory space that you can use to your advantage.
Contrary to the opinion of some users, not all smartphone owners understand at least something in the operating room. android system... They often don’t even know basic things. If you also feel like such a "teapot", then our material was written just for you! Today's article will discuss how to create a folder on Android. This allows you to group multiple applications at once, making it easier to navigate your desktops.
When is it required?
Of course, not everyone needs to create folders. If you only install something on your smartphone from time to time, then you can easily do without folders. Their creation is necessary if your device has a very large number of applications that you regularly use. You can combine shortcuts by program type. For example, one folder will contain games, while the other will consist of antivirus and various system utilities.
We must not forget that in recent times smartphones, which have nothing in addition to desktops, have become increasingly widespread. That is, such devices do not have a separate menu containing shortcuts for all applications. Now imagine a situation when seven or eight dozen programs and games are installed on such a device. All their shortcuts will be located on desktops. Without the folder function, this would greatly complicate navigation - sometimes you would have to search for the desired application for several tens of seconds or even more! Fortunately, creating a folder on your desktop is easy.
Create folder
Some manufacturers are implementing multiple ways to create a folder. But more often than not, users prefer to create a folder on their phone using the following method:
Step 1. Decide in advance which two applications you want to combine into one folder.
Step 2. Hold your finger on the shortcut of the first program.
Step 3. Now drag this shortcut to the shortcut of the second application until a black circle or some other symbol for creating a folder appears.
Step 4. Release your finger. In most cases, the system then prompts you to give the folder a name. Sometimes it does without it - then you can assign a name at any other moment.
Step 5. In the future, you can add other applications to the folder. To do this, simply drag the program icon onto the folder image.
Note: recently, many manufacturers allow you to create folders not only on the desktop, but also in the menu. In particular, this is possible on devices from some other companies.
It should be noted that this feature did not appear in the Android operating system immediately. If your device is very old, it may not be able to create folders. For example, there is no such function in Android 1.6 and even in some subsequent versions of the operating system.
Again, I return to the Android operating system and its "features". These unpleasant features come out at the wrong time. You yourself know about this. But have you ever had applications that did not want to be installed on the phone or, suddenly, the memory turned out to be clogged with something completely incomprehensible? Have you heard anything about sketch files? No?
In my case of a sudden lack of space for installing applications and incomprehensible errors, I blame the mechanism for creating thumbnail files. Couldn't install several times required applications due to the fact that there was an error during installation or the application refused to install due to a small number free space on disk. And I also didn't take many interesting shots. Unfortunately, some advice from the Internet for solving this problem is contradictory or does not work at all.
It is clear that this made me angry. Under the cut I will tell you how I looked for a memory eater and got rid of it. Initial reference data:
- The archive of photos of the Camera application is by default located in the phone at / mnt / sdcard / DСIM / (you can save phone memory if you install applications and store photos on a memory card. I wrote how to do this in a post about basic questions about Android - "" ).
- Thumbnail files of the Camera application are located on the phone at / mnt / sdcard / DСIM / .thumbnails /
I did not set up super-user (root) rights (everything is done with root in two seconds - access rights change right in the phone), but I installed two applications and connected the phone to the computer once.
Attention! Then there are 3 ways. You can run through everything. They work correctly for me on all devices. On Android 6.0.1, the .thumbnails folder is deleted and space is freed (see at the bottom of the post)... The third way is simpler.
Cooking. First I installed android app Assistant and Total Commander... Launched Android Assistant. On the "Toolbox" tab, I selected "Clean up the system". In the line "Sketch files" I had a volume of 778.93 MB. Not so weak, right? Pressing exclamation mark in the triangle I saw the contents of a folder (copies of photos from the gallery) and a directory of files. Here they can be deleted selectively by checking the box next to each file or by checking the box "Sketch files", you can clear the entire thumbnail folder at once. This help is temporary. After viewing the gallery, shooting, installing applications, the folder will be filled with files again.
Method 1. Then I connected the phone to the computer (two new disks appeared in the explorer: inner memory phone and the memory card installed in the phone) and found the DCIM folder in the root of the first disk of the phone - the Sdcard / DСIM / path (The DCIM folders store photos and videos from the phone camera). Also in the DCIM folder there is a .thumbnails folder in which these very sketches are stored, which so suddenly interfere with my life. In addition to the pictures, the .thumbnails folder also contained the .thumbdata4-1967290299 file (you will have different numbers). This is how it looked:
First, I deleted the .thumbnails folder.
Instead of the .thumbnails folder, I created an empty text file, which I renamed to thumbnails for which I set "Read only" in the properties.
Why did I create thumbnails file? The fact is that I will make a file of the same name in the .thumbnails folder with zero size, but I will forbid writing anything to it. Why didn't I put a dot in front of the thumbnails? Because operating system Windows does not allow you to work with files whose names begin with a period. From her point of view, such a file has no name, but only the extension .thumbnails. Android, like its progenitors Linux and Unix, perfectly transfers the period at the beginning of the name and considers such a file hidden. This is my distraction. In short, do not put a full stop, but specify the read-only attributes in the file properties. Now nobody can write anything to this file.
Then I disconnected the phone from the computer, otherwise I would not have access to the DСIM folder from the phone. Now I launched Total Commander on my phone and switched to the SD card and there in the DCIM folder, and in it I found the thumbnails. Slightly longer pressing on the thumbnails line caused context menu, where I chose "Rename".
Fotkal, surfed the internet, installed applications, but the .thumbnails folder did not appear anymore, which is what I wish for you. Good luck and take care of your memory.
Method 2.
Hello! The topic turned out to be very popular, but questions remain. Therefore, I propose to try the second option for deleting the folder of thumbnails files - without a computer. I think that you have read the material above and do not dwell on the details.
From the Google Play store to the smartphone, I put and
1. Opened ES Explorer and went to the folder at / mnt / sdcard / DCIM (path in my case). Created a thumbnails file (no dot).
2. Launched Total Commander, went to / mnt / sdcard / DCIM, there are folders: 100ANDRO, Сamera, .thumbnails and the thumbnails file just created. Deleted the .thumbnails folder, then renamed the thumbnails file (added a dot).
I took a picture, filmed the video, but the folder did not appear.
Method 3.
I launch Total Commander, go to / storage / sdcard0 / DCIM, there are active folders of the Camera application: 100ANDRO, Сamera, .thumbnails. Deleted the .thumbnails folder. With a long tap (long press) on the Camera folder, I called up the menu, where there is an item "New text file", selected it and created the file .thumbnails.
Here's what happened at the exit. The result is similar to the previous ones - sketches are not created, memory does not suddenly run out. 
Popular questions on the topic and answers to them:
- Is / mnt / sdcard / DCIM the only path for storing photos?
No, each disk can have its own path sdcard, sdcard2 etc. The active one is the one that is designated in the settings as "default disk for recording".You can check by taking a photo and looking at which folder / mnt / sdcard / DCIM or mnt / sdcard2 / DCIM it was. This is where the active thumbnails file will be. The path can be registered as storage / sdcard0 / DCIM or storage / sdcard1 / DCIM
UPD. 6/11/2016In the comments to this post, readers write that on devices with Android 6, deleting the .thumbnails folder does not free up space. In this regard, I have one hypothesis. I must say right away that on my Android 6.0.1 the folder is deleted and the space is freed up. Just checked it out. So, I deleted everything and looked at the free space through Total Commander. I suspect that if you delete a folder through ES Explorer, then you will not notice an increase in free space. Why? Because the ES File Explorer app has its own deleted files bin, where it moves files, but doesn't delete. For permanent deletion, you need to empty the trash. I wrote about this in a post.
I don't see the point of giving screenshots, but I have on Android 6.0.1 the .thumbnails folder is deleted and space is freed... I suggest continuing the discussion in the comments.
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